The Ugly Qualities in Baudelaire's the Flowers of Evil

"Ugliness" is an aesthetic category for discordant things, and an important way to see the world. Poet Baudelaire turned his attention to the world of "ugliness", depicting it, praising it and celebrating it, putting it on the same level as beauty, and daring readers to face it directly. In The Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire shows his exploration of ugliness from two dimensions: environment and image. He turns his attention to the crumbling Paris after the miserable life of the underclass and praises the "greatness" of Satan. Beggars, prostitutes, drunkards and gamblers, all of whom were previously reviled in literature, become the objects of Baudelaire's profound analysis. Baudelaire tries to excavate beauty from these ugly phenomena, opening the door of aesthetics to the examination of ugliness.